Robin Hood

I saw this film expecting to see a spectacular version of this classic and legendary hero, hoping the great Ridley Scott could make a new “Gladiator”, but this time the result is not so good. You can’t see anything new that you didn’t see before in the old versions of Robin. But anyway, the movie is a good adventure film and the medieval scenery is very well done. Although I felt that Russell Crowe has the automatic pilot during the full projection, repeating most of the points of the “Gladiator” film. However Cate Blanchett made a good role as a classic and harsh and long-suffering Lady Marian. The rest of the characters are quite typical and topical, but I suppose it’s not easy to do anything new with this story that was filmed a lot of times along the history. So, I continue liking much more the Errol Flynn version of 1938 and of course the Sean Connery’s film of 1976 with Audrey Hepburn.

Well, if you want enjoy a good evening of popcorn and coke, and live a classic adventure, you can go to see it. It’s a good product but it’s really far away of the best works of the master Scott.

My score: 6 (out of 10)

Fish Tank

I read some good reviews about this film. It has some nominations for the European cinema awards and it won the Bafta award to the best film last year 2009. The director Andrea Arnold made a brilliant work showing some points about the real life, and filming a kind of social cinema quite similar to the work of Ken Loach.

The film takes place in the suburbs of London and it shows a lot of very interesting things like, for example, the life of a worker family, the lack of communication and the respect, the facing up to deception, and specially the contradictions of the adolescence or the looking for a place in the world. The young actress Katie Jarvis is a real hurricane and her work is amazing. She supports the 80% of the movie and the result is very good. One of the other actors, Michael Fassbender, appears making also a great work in the movie.

For me, this is the best film of this week. Without a doubt I’ll follow the career of this director. Brilliant movie.

My score: 9 (out of 10)

Iron Man 2

Two years ago I enjoyed the first film of this new saga. The action and the story were good, and I went excited to see this new episode. Well the movie is a decent second part, but effectively… it is a second part, and not more.

Anyway the film is quite good, with a pretty solid story. Robert Downey Jr makes a fun role as the very boastful millionaire Tony Stark, and Mickey Rourke works very well being the bad boy this time although I begin to be tired to see him always so dirty and scruffy in his last movies. The rest of characters are okay, especially Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow.

The special effects are great and you can enjoy explosions, spectacular pursuits, big and very bad robots, evil guys, voluptuous girls and some winks to the future “The Avengers” movie. So it’s a good entertainment product, a good film to enjoy an evening with pop corn and coke.

My score: 7 (out of 10)

Clash of the Titans

I went to see this movie hoping to find a good example of combination of old stories with new technologies, but the result is absolutely disappointing, specially because the film has a cast with several very good actors (like Lian Neeson, Ralph Fiennes or even the promising Sam Worthington).
The classic story about Perseus and Medusa has been changed in a lot of things. So the film seems only a B movie, and not a good film to see in a big theater and to pay the price of the ticket. But the worst part is this movie has the most dreadful 3D effects I have ever seen. It was like a pathetic paper cutout screened in front of your polarized 3D glasses. If "Avatar" is "the day" about 3D technology, this unfortunate film is "the night". You can see perfectly they originally made the movie in 2D and when they saw the success of other new films, they decided to digitalize and to polygonize the sequences to give them volume, and rendering them to try to convert the movie to 3D. But I'm sure they used only two or three stagiaires working a few days to do it, because the result is awful. So I do not recommend spending money to see it. There are better options to do it.

My score: 4 (out of 10)

An education

This is an interesting story that takes you to the London of the Sixties. It has a nice British touch and it’s really a story with moral at the end that transmits the importance of a good education in the real life; very interesting to show to your “nephews”, if you have.

The performance of the first actress Carey Mulligan is brilliant, especially because she is very young and almost a beginner, but she supports almost the full film. She looks lovely and very realist. And her father in the movie, Alfred Molina, makes also a great work, in particular when he speaks with her daughter.

The atmosphere of the sixties is amazing, very well done, both London and Paris, and you can even feel in some characters some details that you can see in classic movies like “La dolce vita” by Fellini. It is the first work in England of the Dogma director Lone Scherfig, the author of “Italian for Beginners” and the result is great.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

The Hurt Locker

I saw this film a few days ago and I enjoyed the entire movie from the first minute until the end. The director Kathryn Bigelow made an awesome work because she shows a very good story but with a format almost like a documentary most of the time. The cast work is fantastic and you can feel the tension in every operation of the specialist soldiers to try to deactivate the terrorist bombs. It’s a great movie about the Iraq war without any political interpretation: only the war and the day by day of the soldiers, like other classical war movies, like Apocalypse now or Full metal jacket.

I agree with the Academy. Without a doubt it is the best film of this year.

My score: 9 (out of 10)

Up in the Air

This is a film that makes you think about life carefully... about the professional life and about personal life. It incites you to think about maturity, about work and its importance in our life, about the disappointment (personal and professional), about the loneliness (sometimes chosen), about the track to be on (the right or the wrong one), about the election of a right person to share life... about lots of things. The dialogs are great and the cast as well. Clooney works here very well and the young and fresh Anna Kendrick matches up to him and to Vera Farmiga. Good movie to converse in front of a coffee or a glass of wine, after the movie.

My score: 9 (out of 10)